560 BRITISH BIRDS. 
The Waterhen is an early breeder, especially after a mild open winter, 
its young in some instances having been known to be hatched in the 
beginning of April. The nest is commenced usually by the beginning of 
April, and the eggs are laid by the second week, or in backward seasons 
not until the end of the month or early in May. The nest is often placed 
amongst the reeds and aquatic vegetation on the banks of the water, but 
not unfrequently it is floating in the centre of the pool amongst the horse- 
tail, reeds, or yellow iris. Sometimes it is placed amongst gnarled roots or 
tall grass, and often on a low fiat branch of a tree. In some cases it 
habitually builds in fir trees, and has been known to hatch its young in a 
tree twenty feet from the ground. This peculiar choice of a site is probably 
to save its eggs from the sudden rising of the water. The nest is in many 
cases a large mass of reeds, sometimes intermixed with flags and coarse 
grass; it is very loosely put together, but the materials beg moist soon 
settle down into a tolerably firm mass. The middle of the nest is rather 
more carefully finished than the other parts, and the materials are finer, 
sometimes dry leaves being used. Some nests are much larger than others, 
and some are much more finished in appearance. Stevenson says that some 
nests are “ingeniously arched over with the young reeds, as if to conceal 
the eggs.” 
The eggs of the Waterhen are from four to ten in number, seven or 
eight being an average clutch. They are buffish white or pale reddish buff 
in ground-colour, spotted and speckled with reddish brown and dark grey. 
The markings are never so numerous as to hide much of the ground-colour, 
and generally they vary in size from that of No. 6 shot toa speck, but 
sometimes many of them are as large as a pea. Some eggs are very 
sparingly marked with very fine specks, others only have a few large 
blotches, whilst many are evenly sprinkled with small markings over the 
entire surface. The most richly marked clutch of Waterhen’s eggs that I 
have ever seen is one containing five eggs, which I took on the 13th of May 
this spring on a pond on Lord Walsingham’s estate at Merton in Norfolk. 
Some of the blotches are nearly an inch long, those eggs which are the most 
blotched being also the most highly incubated ; and one egg, the least incu- 
bated in the clutch, has very few and small surface-spots. This seems to 
show that the bird commences to sit before the full number of eggs is laid, 
and that the colouring-matter is frequently exhausted before the clutch 
is completed. . They vary in length from 1-9 to 1°55 inch, and in breadth 
from 1°3 to 1:15 inch*. The eggs of the Waterhen very closely resemble 
those of the Corn-Crake and the Rails, but their much larger size prevents 
their ever being confused with them. The Waterhen often rears as many 
as three broods in the year. Its young in down have been found as early as 
* An abnormally large egg in my collection measures 2°19 inch in length and 1:45 
inch in breadth. 
